The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) is a great example of how political bias can vary within a news source. While WSJ’s news reporting is regarded as factual and centrist, its Opinion section has a reputation for a conservative skew. This leads us to ask two important questions: how factual is WSJ and how biased is it?
What Is The Factual and How Does It Score Articles?
The Factual identifies the most informative and least opinionated articles from thousands of sources across the political spectrum. It does this by using a consistent and transparent rating algorithm to evaluate articles based on their sources, writing tone, author expertise, and publishing site, ultimately producing a grade between 0 and 100 for each article. The Factual uses this data to explore trends across the media ecosystem as well as to inform our daily newsletter. To learn more about how we score articles, visit our How It Works page.
How Factual Is WSJ?
Over a dataset of 1,000 articles, WSJ scored an average Factual Grade of 64.5%. This is just above the average of 61.9% for all 240 news sources that we analyzed. This places the paper in the 59th percentile of our dataset.
Given the news agency’s high reputation, this score may seem surprising. However, many WSJ articles fail to link to external evidence. Citing a diverse range of sources is a key part of The Factual’s algorithm, so websites that link only to internal content often score less well. (The Factual could not score some articles due to WSJ’s paywall, but our data is a representative sample.)
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Like any news source, scores for articles from WSJ varied widely based on factors like author expertise and cited evidence. For example, some scored above 80%, while others scored below 50%.
How Biased Is WSJ?
As a whole, media bias organizations assign WSJ a “Moderate Right” bias.
AllSides helps illustrate how media sources can contain different levels of bias. They rate the news section of WSJ as “Center,” based on a June 2021 survey of nearly 1,200 voters, as well as over 46,755 community ratings . However, they rate WSJ’s Opinion section as “Lean Right” and previously as “Far Right” prior to September 2018.
Despite this bias, the AllSides review notes that WSJ’s Opinion section “does not outright ignore Left voices and perspectives, as many extremely biased outlets do” and is “Lean Right biased, but independent in thought.”
Meanwhile, Media Bias/Fact Check (MBFC) scores WSJ as “Right Center.” This is due to “low biased news reporting combined with a strong right biased editorial stance.” They also rate WSJ as “Mostly Factual” because of “anti-climate, anti-science stances, and occasional misleading editorials.” Through the MBFC site, 37% of community votes assign a “Least Biased” (Center) rating and 36% assign a “Right Center” rating.
Recent criticism of the newspaper often focuses on climate or politics. One vein centers on climate change skepticism. WSJ is notorious for publishing Opinion pieces that contradict scientific consensus on man-made climate change. Examples include articles with false statements, such as regarding sea level rise and the rate of ice melt. WSJ also has an unflattering record of scepticism historically. WSJ authors famously published contrarian — and ultimately erroneous — standpoints on issues such as second-hand smoke, ozone depletion, and acid rain.
Politics is also a point of contention. In 2017, then editor-in-chief Gerard Baker received criticism, including from within the paper, for asking writers to avoid using the term “majority-Muslim” in describing countries subjected to a Trump administration executive order on travel and immigration. Likewise, a group of WSJ staff demanded reforms at the paper to “encourage more muscular reporting about race and social inequities” and reduce reliance on “business leaders and government officials,” following the George Floyd protests. It’s worth noting that the newspaper has made some efforts to address these and other concerns.
Who Owns WSJ?
The family of Rupert Murdoch owns WSJ through the media company News Corp. The company owns British tabloids such as The Sun and The Times, and the Murdoch family also owns Fox News. Connections between Rupert Murdoch and former president Trump provide ammunition for those concerned about right-leaning bias at the paper. However, on the whole, WSJ maintains a strong reputation for journalistic standards and editorial independence.
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How to Mitigate Bias
News articles are bound to have bias because all authors have some frame of reference within which they describe a story. Political bias ratings are helpful in understanding this framing. However, it can be more beneficial to know how factual an article is based on quantifiable metrics that can be seen across the media ecosystem, such as cited evidence, author expertise, and writing tone. This is what The Factual ascertains.
Reading several, highly rated articles from across the political spectrum helps counter the bias of any news source or story. To have the day’s most factual news stories delivered to your inbox every morning, subscribe to our daily newsletter.
Article updated on December 12, 2021 to reflect new data.